July 17, 188S. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



47 



vegetables, rather than of flowers. And yet I think that a few 

 notes gathered from the unchangeable features of this ancient 

 country may bo of interest, ever bearing in mind how inti- 

 mately it is mixed up with all the Sacred Writing*, and that 

 there Btill remains this great promise for tho land " whom tho 

 Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people." 

 More than three thousand years ago and Egypt had its history, 

 its civilisation, its arts and sciences, its priesthood, and its 

 kings. Its physical features and natural products are now 

 much what they were in those far-off times. The royal Nile, 

 tracing its majestic way, still sweeps through the length of 

 the land, and spreads fertility and blessings on every side, 

 although these gifts aro sometimes Badly changed into devas- 

 tation and misery, when tho capricious waters rise above their 

 ordinary elevation, carrying away both man and beast in their 

 relentless course. 



The flax and fine linen of Egypt, so often mentioned in 

 Holy Writ, are represented now in the Cotton fields, towards 

 the cultivation of which tho alluvial deposits of the Nile, 

 together with its cleverly constructed canals and embankments, 

 are made subservient. When the Cotton is gathered crops of 

 Beans, Clover, and Barley take its place, artificial irrigation 

 making up for want of rain. " The peasantry," says Mr. 

 Wanklyn in a letter to the Secretary of the Cotton Supply 

 Association, " are most intelligent cultivators, and invariably 

 pursue the most productive systems. They have nothing to 

 learn in that way ; indeed, our English farmers might learn 

 a good deal from them in the careful cultivation of every avail- 

 able yard of land. The cleanness of the growing crops — not a 

 weed to be seen, and the manner in which they protect some of 

 their crops, by putting upright reeds along each row of seeds 

 to shelter the young plants from the winds, are worthy of notice." 

 This growing of Cotton has had a prejudicial effect on that 

 other production of the soil for which Egypt was even more 

 noted than for its flax. In days of old " there was corn in 

 Egypt;" but in 186S Mr. Wanklyn writes, " Much of the land 

 shows unmistakeable signs of exhaustion from being over- 

 cropped in Cotton. Other crops have been neglected ; and the 

 people are paying dearly for food which has been imported 

 for them, whereas they formerly exported large quantities of 

 cereals." 



The race of Pharaohs and of taskmasters does not seem to 

 be extinct. From the remote days of the shepherd kings 

 down to this present hour, the government of Egypt has been 

 its curse. Burdens grievous to be borne have been laid on the 

 children of the soil as well as on strangers, and " all manner 

 of service in the field, wherein they made them serve, has been 

 with rigour." So heavy still are the taxes in money and in 

 produce, that we read that the poor farmer, or " fellah," is 

 often compelled to steal from his own crops sufficient for the 

 need of his half-starving family, which he carefully hides away 

 from the tax-gatherer's eye. Mr. Wanklyn speaks of £1 being 

 paid to the present Government for every acre of cultivated 

 land, and of the rent of land being £5 an acre. 



Next in importance to the people, in whose ey*s the occu- 

 pation of a shepherd was an abomination, after the corn comes 

 the fish. When in the wilderness the children of Israel " re- 

 membered the fish which they did eat in Egypt freely ;" and 

 in the prophetic curse uttered by Isaiah against Egypt, a part 

 of it is that " The fishers also shall mourn," and " they shall 

 be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and 

 ponds for fish." 



In the journal which was sent to me with the plants, the 

 habitats of which I have to describe, I find this passage, re- 

 ferring to a visit which the writer paid to examine some ex- 

 cavations recently made by a gentleman while preparing to 

 build a new house near Alexandria. " We found it well worth 

 a visit ; water-tanks and room-walls had been exhumed in very 

 perfect condition, but the gem of the place was the fish-tank, 

 about 12 feet square, and having in its sides, all round, jars 

 built into the cement for the fish to hide in." The exhumed 

 villa was of Roman architecture, and the prophecy of Isaiah was 

 uttered many hundred years before Egypt became a Roman 

 province. Yet centuries since the fish pond was filled up with 

 sand and earth, and now the ancient jars and the tank itself 

 have been destroyed, the purposes thereof having long ago been 

 rendered useless. 



Even more unchangeable in their aspect than the great river 

 are the deserts of Egypt ; but with the desert the modern traveller 

 has but little to do : he looks at it from the windows of a railway 

 carriage, or, perhaps, he slowly walks by the side of the train, 

 tryiDg in vain to realise something of the horrors of the wilder- 



ness. How often, when reading of the exodus of the children 

 of Israel, have I tried to picture to myself that " evil place," 

 which " is no place of seed, or of FigH, or of Vines, or of Pomo- 

 granates," and where thero was " no water to drink," and " no 

 bread," in which they wero condemned to wander for so many 

 weary years. 



Accustomed to tho fresh rich verdure of England, or to tho 

 more glowing beauty of the Continent, how can one who has 

 never travelled in the East guin with any degree of truth- 

 fulness an idea of the desert with its trackless wastes of glaring 

 sand? — of that "immense ocean of loose reddish sand, un- 

 limited to the eye, heaped up in enormous ridges running 

 parallel to each other from north to south, undulation after 

 undulation, each swelling 200 or 300 feet in average height, 

 with slant sides and rounded crests furrowed in every di- 

 rection by the capricious gales of the desert," where "in the 

 depths between, the traveller finds himself, as it were, im- 

 prisoned in a suffocating sand-pit, hemmed in by burning walls 

 on every side ; while at other times while labouring up tho 

 slope, he overlooks what seems a vast sea of fire, swelling 

 under a heavy monsoon wind, and ruffled by a cross blast into 

 little red hot waves," whore there is no " shelter nor rest for 

 eye or limb amid torrents of light and heat poured from above 

 on an answering glare reflected below." We cannot realise this, 

 and yet as we read', a faint reflection comes over us of that 

 longing with which the escaped Israelites turned back in 

 thought to the juicy fruits and vegetables, to the cool clay 

 water-pots of the land of their bondage. I know that the deserts 

 of Lower Egypt, and the " desert of the wandering." differ con- 

 siderably from those of central Arabia. The limits are more 

 circumscribed, and their features of barren desolation are not 

 marked in such vivid characters, they are more intersected 

 with vegetation, more fertilised by springs ; but it seems to mo 

 that in realising one we are helped to realise the other. 



Not far from Cairo, and from the ancient ruins of Memphis, 

 across the Nile, to the west, rising from a plain of sand, stand 

 the Pyramids of Gyzeh, mentioned by Herodotus as having 

 been built upwards of four hundred years before he visited 

 Egypt, or about nine hundred years before Christ. He also 

 states (on, I believe, the authority of the priests of Memphis), 

 that 100,000 men were twenty years building what is called the 

 Great Pyramid, which, covering a space of thirteen acres, rises, 

 or would rise if about 20 feet of its apex had not been destroyed, 

 to a height of about 480 feet. 



All the Pyramids have square bases, and their sides face tho 

 cardinal points, rising in steps which gradually diminish in 

 size till they taper to a point, or rather would do so, if that 

 point were not broken off, and a flat form left in its stead. 



These stupendous monuments, so silent, grand, and solitary, 

 add to the shores of the Nile another unchangeable feature. 

 They extend at irregular distances for more than sixty miles on 

 the west side of the Nile, without change, as we count change, 

 yet slowly and surely these silent witnesses to the mutability 

 of all earthly architecture, are passing away, and at the present 

 time I believe there is not one which is left in a state of perfect 

 preservation. Immutability or exemption from change seems 

 the one great "idea" of Egypt, exemplified in her laws, her 

 customs, and her architecture. The lives of thousands were 

 sacrificed again and again to show forth this idea — an idea, 

 containing within it elements at once the most puerile and the 

 most noble ; puerile, indeed, when it sacrifices life and happi- 

 ness to earthly fame ; but noble beyond all words when allowed 

 to develope itself into its true shape — the immortality of the 

 soul. 



Of the wild flowers of Egypt, I have only the few that I 

 mentioned in the last paper, as found growing by the seashore. 

 " There is little to interest the horticulturist in Egypt," writes 

 Mr. Wanklyn. " The much-talked-of Shoobra Gardens (the 

 gardens of Haleem Pasha), near Cairo, are vaunted solely because 

 they are the only thing of the kind in the country ; but ' they 

 are not what we should call gardens at home ' (as the intelligent 

 English gardener remarked to me), being more plantations of 

 trees, planted in a star-fish pattern, with cross paths, so that 

 there is a shady walk for all hours. The flowers were but the 

 common kinds of Roses, and flowering shrubs of ordinary 

 character." 



In the centre of the garden at Shoobra there is a fountain 

 surrounded by an open building, with a marble floor, on which 

 couches are placed, and the whole description reads to rue green 

 and fresh, and luxuriously cool, especially after the description 



* Palgrave's "Arabia." 



